Brands That Won (and Lost) Google in&nbsp2015

As part of the MozCast 10K (a 10,000-keyword daily Google tracker), we keep a close eye on the domains with the most page-one Google real-estate. As of December 1st, these were the "Big 10":

"Share" represents the percentage of total results each domain has across the entire data set. Of course, absolute rankings can vary a lot depending on the data set, but what's more interesting is how any given brand moves over time.

We watch day-to-day movements closely as search marketers, and often track winners and losers when Google announces a big update, but I thought it would be interesting to take the long-term view. Who are the brands who won and lost the most Google real estate in the past year? All of the data from this post is from the MozCast 10K and spans December 1, 2014–December 1, 2015.

Biggest winners in 2015

If we look at absolute gains in total page-one Google real estate, the winners are in the table below. The "Rank" columns shows their current position in the Top 100:

Online retail giant Amazon.com held tight to the #2 position in our data set, making the biggest overall gain. Etsy made impressive gains, jumping from the #81 spot at the end of 2014 to the #31 spot on December 1st, 2015. Even with its financial woes, Groupon performed solidly on Google, moving from the #87 spot to #40. Instagram jumped from outside of the Top 100 entirely (#141) to #57.

It's interesting to note that two of the biggest gains in 2015 were for Google properties, YouTube and Google Play. YouTube moved from #5 to #4, and Google Play came in just shy of the Top 10 at #12. YouTube gains don't count growth in Video Cards, large video links which dominate some Google results. Here's an example Video Card from a search for "chandelier":

The numbers in the chart above may seem small, but keep in mind that there's only a 0.01% difference in total Google real-estate between #9 and #10 in the overall "Big 10." A tenth-of-a-percent represents massive land holdings in the world of page-one results.

Most improved in 2015

Another way to slice-and-dice winners in 2015 is to look at sites with the biggest relative gains. In other words, who improved the most relative to their position in 2014? Here are the Top 10 Most Improved:

Six of these are repeats from the overall winners list, but looking at relative changes, Etsy's and Instagram's gains are even more impressive. Both sites more than doubled their page-one Google real estate in our data set, with Etsy seeing gains of over 150%.

Biggest losers in 2015

Google real estate is limited, and for every winner there ultimately has to be one or more losers. These are the sites that took the heaviest absolute losses in our data set:

Social media giant Twitter was the big loser in 2015, falling out of the Top 10, from #6 in 2014 to #15 at the end of 2015. This "loss" may be deceptive, however, as Google and Twitter struck a deal in August of this year to display Tweets directly in search results. Here's an example, from a branded search for "Etsy":

Tweets are now a true Google vertical result, occupying an organic position and appearing in almost 6% of the searches that we track. Fellow social media site, Pinterest, also lost ground in 2015, after nearly breaking into the Top 10 (they were #11 in 2014). Unfortunately for Pinterest, their losses weren't offset by a sweetheart deal with Google.

Google-dominating Wikipedia showed a weak spot in their armor this year, losing twice the ground that #2 Amazon gained. Wikipedia took some losses early in 2015, and then ran into more trouble with their mid-year switch to a secure (https:) site.

Online auction site and aspiring retailer eBay added to their troubles in 2015, dropping out of the Top 10 from #9 to #17. eBay took heavy losses in May of 2014, but then partially recovered going into the beginning of 2015. As of December 1st, all of those short-term gains have disappeared in our data set.

Yelp gave up its #4 position in 2015 to YouTube, and seemed to suffer from some of Google's local changes this year. Retailers Walmart and Overstock also saw year-over-year losses, as did online answer site wikiHow.

An oddly dominant site in 2014, the NIH's National Library of Medicine site dropped from #17 to #20. Their presence may be the result of a high number of medical queries in our data set, and was probably impacted by a handful of niche Google updates, including the launch of the Medical Knowledge Panel, such as this one for "type 2 diabetes":

On the bright side, it looks like the Tax Man took a hit in 2015, with the IRS dropping from #19 to #27. While it seems odd that two government (.gov) sites hit our list of losers, I suspect this was coincidental.

The envelope, please...

While Amazon's continued dominance is impressive, and Wikipedia's tumble from grace is certainly worth noting, I think the big story this year is Etsy. In addition to taking the #2 spot in total gains, they more than doubled their 2014 Google page-one real estate and rocketed from the #81 overall position in our data set to #31. Etsy and other niche online retailers will be the ones to watch in 2016.

I should note that, even in our data set, there are thousands of domains that rank on Page 1. This post dives into big brands that tend to be interesting to the broader world (even outside of SEO), but there are definitely many opportunities. Our data set also doesn't include a ton of long-tail queries, which can collectively add up into big opportunities.

I don't use Etsy a lot, so I may be off, but it seems like Esty always shows me results that are located close to me - I wonder if their own localization algorithms have something to do with their overall boost in rankings.

Is there a place to see just a list of the top 100 (or 200) sites with their respective ranking? Would love to see what the top of the field in the MozCast data set looks like, and to track the changes over time.

This is such an insightful article. It would be really nice to see these rankings for each of the top 10 internet usage countries. Am sure that is a lot of work, but if you can automate some of this report generation (which i am sure you do), then the data will throw up some additional insight. Great work as always.

Great article - lots of food for thought - but also ... confusing! Twitter and Pinterest on their way down? I work as a social media manager for www.arcreactions.com and I do not see them as less effective or on their way out. The same with Instagram - It's definitely on the up... but a winner? I'm not ultra convinced.

A couple of things - first, please understand that traffic/usage of social media sites is somewhat unique. Twitter and Pinterest don't live and die by how they rank in Google. This data is taken from a purely organic SEO perspective, and it probably isn't the best benchmark for the overall success of those sites. Also, please note that, as mentioned in the post, Twitter results are available directly in Google SERPs now, so their loss of organic positions was offset by an entirely new kind of result.

No surprise really that YouTube and Google Play made a jump! Will only see more of this in the future IMO. Twitter's results should be taken with a grain of salt - as you stated they now occupy a position in the top 10 for a lot of search results.

There's plenty of places for "small fish," but if your small business only sells the products that established companies already sell, and you don't have a way to differentiate yourself from the big-boys - do you really deserve to out-rank them? I don't think so.

The Twitter thing is indeed unusual, would love to hear from the Twitter HQ what the partnership with Google has done to their traffic. Everyone has been talking this year how Twitter growth is stagnant, but it's still a huge and at least not declining.

With all the automation on Twitter (and bots), I wouldn't be surprised to find that Twitter has actually recessed. Also wouldn't be shocked to find out that spam/bots is the reason for their slip in the MozCast rankings, as well as stagnant growth.

Great stuff as usual, Dr. Pete! For Twitter, It's an interesting question as to whether they "lost" or did Google "dial down" there Universal Search results in any way since they where dialing up there results outside of Universal.

To my knowledge, they never dialed down on 1-3 sites for something like this, other than an algo that effects an entire sector. So, filters like Pigeon and Pirate had especially huge effects on local directory websites and torrent sites, respectively, but not on any one site in particular.

P.S: The Twitter thing is indeed unusual, would love to hear from the Twitter HQ what the partnership with Google has done to their traffic. Everyone has been talking this year how Twitter growth is stagnant, but it's still a huge and at least not declining.

I did not thought twitter will be in the list of top 10 losers seriously, but when seen the image, it was on the first place. How strange is this, hard to believe but still your data could not be wrong.

Well, my data could be wrong :) As discussed a bit in the post, I think Twitter is a special case. When Google started showing tweets directly in search results, they probably scaled back how Twitter ranks to balance that out. It's an unusual situation. There's no other site that has an entire vertical.

Yes exactly, even when google started showing the particular tweets directly in the search result, I thought twitter will be favorite to google or may be google loving twitter the most as they providing what people like these days. But the situation is different now. Anyway, thanks for your explanation sir :)